June 2, 2008

IGNORANCE IS THE MOTHER OF FEAR

So I was in the middle of watching Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me Saturday when I heard my phone ring from the other room. Even though it was smack in the middle of a sunny afternoon and I had two huge dogs on either side of me, I was worked up into enough of a lather to jump when I heard the phone. But then I was RELIEVED, because now I could pause the movie and give my adrenal glands a little break from pumping out the coritsol I would need should Bob leap out of the tv set and come after me.

I wrapped up the phone call and came back to the movie, which was smack in the middle of a terrifying long shot of an empty, featureless hallway in an office building. The florescent lighting and greenish hue of the hallway paint was menacing in a dreamlike way, and the shot just went on forever and ever and ever. There was an elevator bank and three doorways off the hallway, and no way to tell which one the monster would spring from. I scootched as far back into the couch as I could and marveled at David Lynch’s ability to pack such menace into a still shot of an empty hallway. STILL nothing happened. I realized my breath was shallow, and that I was clutching the remote to my chest as though it were some sort of breastplate.

Still nothing.

Still nothing.

Still nothing.

And then – suddenly – the screen turned black!

And the Sony logo began bouncing across it, from one side to the other.

And that would be when I realized that I’d been frozen in fear for at least two solid minutes in front of a paused movie.